A robot may be described as humanoid as long as it possesses certain attributes of the appearance and functionalities of man: a head, a trunk, two arms, optionally two hands, two legs, two feet etc. Beyond appearance, the functions that a humanoid robot is capable of fulfilling will depend on its capacity to perform movements, to speak and to “reason”. Humanoid robots are capable of walking, of making gestures, with the limbs or with the head. The complexity of the gestures that they are capable of performing is continually increasing. They can even play football, the Robocup having become the challenge where the world's best design teams of humanoid robots confront one another. Certain robots can speak, in response to speech heard and interpreted or by spouting a text which is dispatched to them by email or placed under their gaze. Computers, for the moment not embedded aboard humanoid robots, have been designed to play chess and have beaten the best grandmasters.
Virtual robots are moreover highly present in the video games universe, with a considerable development of avatars of real characters that live a “second life” in a mirror universe of the real universe (“Second Life”). But physical robots have hitherto hardly been mingled with the games universe. At the very most, a few simple implementations, such as the ROB (Robotic Operating Buddy) from Nintendo™ in the 1980s, may be mentioned. This robot is programmed to react to variations in brightness, color or shape of parts of a screen and to have behaviors determined as a function of sequences of a game that are displayed on the screen. These methods have formed the subject of several patents, notably American patents U.S. Pat. No. 4,729,563 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,815,733. The ROB is however not mobile on legs, thereby significantly limiting its capacity to participate in diversified games. Neither does it have any capacity for communication by speech. The humanoid robot from the company Sony™, which has formed the subject of patents U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,580,369 and 6,832,132, is described in game environments, notably football or athletic games. This is however its only recreational activity and it does not have any function allowing it to participate in complex games of a virtual universe, such as games of strategy. Non-humanoid automatons for carrying out specialized game functions (chess, certain card games, Guitar Hero, etc.) are also known. It would be advantageous to be able to have a humanoid robot capable of carrying out the entirety of these functions.
However, the problem posed by this integration on one and the same humanoid robot platform of the capacities to participate at one and the same time in games requiring a physical capacity, a capacity for expression and a capacity for reflection has not been solved by the solutions of the prior art.
The present invention solves this problem by affording a humanoid robot which can, for a plurality of games, serve as interface for a player in order to dialog with a game, provide him with an intelligent aid to progress through the game and occupy a completely separate place as player in a multi-player game.